Forsaken

Forsaken.

Strong's Dictionary uses words like abandoned, secluded, alone.

This is the truth that God amped up for me this past Easter.

But let me start from, well, the beginning?  No, more like the middle, or even maybe more closer to the end of this revelation.

God the perfect Teacher took me from what I knew to a dive deep into the unknown.  Yet I had not known that I did not know it.

The known:  Jesus, my loving Savior, was one with my Father and His Spirit.  One.  A more one-ness than I have with my hubby of 42 years.  A one-ness so complete that they can be 3 in 1.  Words fail me.

Yet the Father asked the Son to break away, go away, leave.

Go down to earth, Son, and live among these hard-hearted people.  But you will have to give up your special-ness, your deity, not totally, but just so there is room for you to be All-Man and All-God.

The first slice.

Feel what mankind feels.  Be tired, hungry, crabby, joyful, loved, tempted.  All of it.  Experience every single thing that humans experience.  And live it like a human for 30 years.

The second slice.

Then top it off, be obedient to Me, Your Father, and give up all of Your deity.  That part of You that is God, perfect, holy.  Give up  ALL.  OF.  GOD-ness.  All of it. And take on the world's sin, ugliness, unholiness.

As a mom of four girls, I guess I always knew that I would have to give them up to their hubbies, leaving behind family, our family, and making a new one-ness with their hubbies, their children.  New families.

But when the time came to let go, I found some easier to release than others.  The oldest, though it should have been hardest, was easiest because I didn't understand the pain of separation.  How does a woman hold a child in her womb, near her heart, and then rip that child away without leaving scars?

I just didn't see how it would effect me.  Later.

So each daughter-child became woman-child and bride-child and finally mother-to-child herself.  And a mother's heart bleeds tears of loneliness and joy.

Did the God Father feel that same joy mixed with the aloneness?  I know the Son did.  His words have echoed through time, "My God!  My God!  Why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

Jesus sliced up, dished out, emptied:  FORSAKEN.

I can only imagine the pain of that separation.  Forsaken.  No longer 3-in-1, but 1 minus 2 leaving less than 1.   One ripped from the Triune, bleeding and in pain.  And broken and suffering and ... evil.

I wasn't ready to learn this truth before now.  God made it so very real to me this year.  But first He removed all those things I had been clinging to.  He took "my" ministry to youth.  He took my mother.  He took my health.  He left me alone.

But NOT forsaken.  Not abandoned.  At least not by Him.  He was ever with me, filling me, guiding me with a welcoming light into His words for me.

And when I seemed to be at my lowest, He turned His light upon the truth of forsaken-ness, how He HAD to turn away, abandon, forsaken His Son, His other part, His Beloved that I might have life and have it abundantly.

Sisters, our God is holy.  Without sin.  And in His holiness.  He can not be near sin, unholiness.  And so when His Son delivered Himself up for me, for us, Jesus took on our ugliness.  Our sin.  "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf" 2 Cor. 5:21.

What love the Son must have for His Father that He would "deliver Himself up for ME"! (Gal. 2:20).  And what love for me who did not deserve it.

Did He know beforehand what pain there was in being forsaken?  I'm not sure.  But forsaken, left alone, separated from the Father, is what He willing did.

I thank my God for the fact that I have a part of Him in me.  If I did not have His Spirit in me, could I truly learn about being forsaken and endure it?  I think not.